Nights I Can't Remember, Friends I'll Never Forget

Yeah we were boys who made a lot of noise
And we, sang all our songs for free
We partied through college, acquired some knowledge
Never did get a degree
We did it our way lookin' back on the good days
There's still not a lot I regret
There's some Nights I Can't Remember, with Friends I'll Never Forget
(Toby Keith, "Nights I Can't Remember, Friends I'll Never Forget")

It's finals week and I am sitting at work because I don't have any finals to take. I'm feeling a little nostalgic right now as I think about how everything is changing so quickly. Though few of my close friends are graduating in May (I believe Bailie and Rusty are the only ones, but it is early in the morning so forgive me if I forgot you, you know I probably still love you even if I didn't mention you because I am not fully awake and alert yet), I still feel like everything is different already. This past weekend I moved the majority of my stuff out of the dorm and into the house I will be sharing with Brett and Brian. I am done with my formal education at the University of Nebraska and will spend next semester applying everything I "learned" in the last 2 years in Teachers College (or, The College of Education and Human Sciences to everyone accepted after my class) hopefully across the hall from Shona at Belmont Elementary School. I am not playing nanny this summer for Jay, since he started Kindergarten he attended a day-care and will be there throughout the summer, though I am sure on occasion I will watch him and sneak in a few trips to the swimming pool. Also, I have slowly (or abruptly, depending on how you look at it) lost one of my closest friends and neither Teetz nor I are quite sure why. We know the basic event, but considering it has dragged on for this long, we are both kind of confused. I guess Adam's phone call really got me thinking about all this stuff and now, though I am happy we talked, I am kind of sad. For all the drama last summer with Crazy Jessica, it was a lot of fun and part of that was because I had such awesome friends to hang out with. I lived one building over from Adam and Silas and we drank a lot, I lived with Kayleen, who thank goodness is not crazy, and we had fun too. We went to the bars, had a party, drank just to drink, and played Super Mario Bros 3 on my old school Nintendo. Silas and Adam cooked dinner, Adam and I went to the horse races, half the time I lived at their apartment anyway; life didn't get much better than last summer. But things change and this summer is going to be a complete 180: Adam will be in Iraq, Silas is in Grand Island (but cross your fingers, he may be moving back here soon!!!), I'm not living with Kayleen, I'm not watching Jay...I think I've made it clear there are going to be a lot of changes. I know we'll still all hang out and we'll all still party, and hey, some of my friends from Wabash may even come for a few days to see how exciting life isn't here in Lincoln. The point is, those were some of the best times I've had in my life, and at least we've got the pictures to prove it, but I don't think I can ever top it. I guess part of my reason for feeling nostalgic is that I am 22 now, and I am *EEEEK* growing up. Going down to Ground Zero (you know, the place that has 27 bars in about a 4 block radius or whatever) just doesn't get me going like it used to. When I turned 21 though, man we were out having the time of our lives just drinking, dancing in cages at Mickey's, playing pool, and stumbling back to campus. I just get a little sad thinking about these things that won't ever happen again, and it started this weekend with moving. I was packing all my stuff and I started thinking about how, last year at this time Adam had that huge hideous white truck and was helping me move all my stuff, and how he was carrying my futon frame but we couldn't fit it in the elevator (well, we could have but he was being stubborn and not listening to anything I said) so he carried it down five flights of stairs. Little things like that just make me sigh. Or I remember how he and John and Alex came and took apart my loft and were bitching and grumbling the whole time, but still they did it for me. Or there's the time when it was absolutely pouring out and Kayleen and I ran around outside, kicking water at each other and doing cartwheels on the grass, slipping and sliding everywhere. We also managed to witness a murder (we think, but we have over-active imaginations). We were sitting in the living room one night and heard people arguing in the parking lot and, being curious, went out onto the deck. We were looking around for who was yelling and then quickly went back inside when they looked up at us. The yelling continued so we went into Kayleen's room and were looking through her blinds, with the light on so people could see of of course because sometimes we're not that bright, and we couldn't see anyone til finally we spotted them, and of course they were staring at us and probably had been for a few minutes. This was AFTER we heard what sounded like a gun shot. So we quickly shut off the light to her room and tried to be better spies and when we looked out the window again we couldn't see anyone until all the sudden this car tears out of the parking lot and we were 100% certain there was a dead body behind the garages. So what did we do? We went out and looked of course. However, the grass was too tall to really see anything and it never occurred to either of us that we'd never actually seen a dead body and that was probably a good thing - nor did we consider what we would do if there actually was one back there. We ran back inside and camped out in the living room on the floor with our cell phones right next to us - we decided neither of us wanted to sleep by ourselves, and if someone wanted to kill us, the pathetic locks on our bedroom doors weren't going to keep them out anyway. And besides that, at least we'd die together. Obviously we survived and the next day when we went out to look again, there was no body. Though it was really late when all of this occurred and we do let our imaginations get the best of us sometimes, I am not sure if either one of us is now 100% there WASN'T a body back there. Who knows.

I realize that was kind of a tangent, but have you ever had a fun adventure like that? Probably not, but there are also many people more logical than I am - I usually just react to things immediately and don't give a lot of thought and I pretty much run purely on emotion. That's not to say I'm not logical, I just have a hard time controlling impulses A LOT. My theory is kind of like this: "Want, take, have." Very simple.

I think writing about this has made me feel better about the situation as a whole. I know change is good, and given my ADHD, change is necessary to keep my attention. I don't necessarily want things to be exactly like they were last summer because lets face it: there were some troubling, upsetting times as well, a lot of it was Adam-related (Bailie, you know I love you forever for everything you did that night), but there were so many good times too. I have never laughed, cried, played, drank, slept, or partied harder than I did last summer. Hopefully this one can top it, although I am not entirely sure I want it to. You just can't remake memories like that.

Plus side to all these changes of late: Teetz is going to be here this summer so I won't have to harass him every other day and rack up huge charges on my cell phone bill.

That's all for now, my rambling has completely ceased to make sense. Bottom line: I love all my friends dearly and do not know what I would do without them.

Days til Teetz is legal: 44